"Why Can't I Be Different and Original . . . Like Everybody Else?" - Viv Stanshall

Monday, July 11, 2016

We Go Biking

As comedian/actor/motivational speaker/mystic/messiah/whatever-the-fuck-he-is Russell Brand once noted, an immigrant is merely someone who used to be somewhere else. "I was over there and now I'm over here," and America freaks out.

We were a country that faced down Italian fascism, Nazi stormtroopers marching across Europe, one of the most diabolical dictators in history, and Japanese fanaticism and kamikaze pilots, and beat them all, winning the war on all fronts in six years. We've been in Afghanistan, one of the poorest nations on Earth, for 13 years now, and there's no end in sight, but someone sets their shoes on fire on an airplane and we freak out and suspend the Bill of Rights in the name of "security."

I'm not advocating militarism, but I'm trying to point out how much stronger we were as a nation when we weren't letting fear and paranoia guide our actions and decisions.

The huddled masses coming to our shores with their different skin tones and funny headwear don't scare me - it's the bigoted, powerful men with artificial hair who want to suspend our liberties and drag us into new for-profit wars that make me lose sleep.